"Such story-book constancy! Why didn't you ask your friend the late Sirdar to have Leeds pitched into the Nile. It would have saved you those four years' waiting? You know you haven't many years to waste, Sir Charles."
"I'm forty-five," he said, colouring painfully.
"Four years gone to hell," said the old lady with that delicate candour which sometimes characterised her.... "And now what do you propose to do with the rest of 'em? Dawdle away your time?"
"Face my fate," he admitted touching his moustache and fearfully embarrassed.
"Well, if you're in a hurry, you'll have to go down South to face it. She's at Palm Beach for the next three weeks."
"Thank you," he said.
She looked up at him, her little opaque green eyes a trifle softened.
"I am trying to get you the prettiest woman in America," she said. "I'm ready to fight off everybody else—beat 'em to death," she added, her eyes snapping, then suddenly kind again—"because, Sir Charles, I like you. And for no other reason on earth!"
Which was not the exact truth. It was for another man's sake she was kind to him. And the other man had been dead many years.